Sturgeon's Sylva Wycke, though loving and benevolent, is none-the-less the literary ancestor of Asimov's Solarians (in his Elijah Bailey Robot novels) or the Tessier-Ashpools in the Villa Straylight space station in William Gibson's Neuromancer who are so rich and so far above the rules and challenges of the rest of humanity that they have in effect become alien.